[2020 악몽의 자영업]Across the house, the line of tears closed… Already 70,000 people, packed

By November of this year, a sharp drop of 76,000 people
The first 10% of self-employed people
Only 50,000 stores in crisis of business closure next year

With the re-proliferation of Corona 19, the government’s quarantine measures have been strengthened, and even citizens’ consumption activities have been reduced, increasing the suffering of self-employed people. On the 31st, the streets of Myeong-dong, Jung-gu, Seoul, where restaurants and various stores are concentrated, are showing a busy street. / Reporter Kim Hyun-min kimhyun81@

[아시아경제 이선애 기자] “I didn’t run away from debts so I didn’t run away at night, and it’s not going to be ruined by corona…” Mr. Kim (46), who had been running a chicken rib house at Jonggak Station for 11 years, swallowed a dry spit while looking at the empty shops on the other side of the alley. At the end of the year, there were only two teams of guests who visited his restaurant seven hours after opening the door. In the vicinity of Jonggak Station, the representative commercial district in Seoul, the old vitality could not be found. There are only a few restaurants and shops that have opened, but there are more shop owners than people walking through the streets. Not only large restaurants but also culinary academies that have been in their place for decades have closed and even removed internal furniture. Even in the alley of a busy travel agency, only travel product flyers were scattered on the floor. At the beginning of this year, merchants’ vows to overcome the novel coronavirus infection (Corona 19) have also collapsed, and there are only signs of’temporary closure’.

The self-employed damage will continue due to Corona 19 on the 28th, and the proportion of self-employed people compared to the employed is expected to drop to 10% for the first time in history. According to the National Statistical Office, as of January-November this year, the total number of employed decreased by about 180,000 compared to the previous year. Of these, the number of self-employed people is not serious. The number of people decreased by 76,000, reaching about 42%. The proportion of self-employed people, which remained at 30% in the 1980s and 20% until recently, has rapidly declined since Corona 19.

There is also a forecast that the number of self-employed households driven to business closure crisis could exceed 50,000 next year. According to the’Financial Stability Report for the Second Half of 2020′ recently released by the Bank of Korea, among domestic self-employed households (household owners of self-employed households) that reached about 2437,000 last year, households experiencing a’liquidity crisis’ remained at 2.3% in February this year. It was estimated that it rose to 7.5% this month. The BOK predicted that if the government and financial sectors’ deferment of repayment of principal and interest payments expires in March next year, this ratio could soar to 10.4% (about 253,400 households) at the end of next year. The proportion of self-employed households who actually went bankrupt because they could not pay off their debts even if they sold all of their assets was estimated to increase to 2.2% (about 53,600 households) by the end of next year.

Start-ups are decreasing, business closures are increasing, and the vacancy rate of shopping malls is also increasing rapidly. According to the Korea Real Estate Agency, the vacancy rate of mid- and large-sized shopping centers in the third quarter of this year was 12.4%, up 10.9 percentage points from 11.5% in the third quarter of 2019, the highest since 2013. The vacancy rate for small shopping centers in the third quarter was 6.5%, up 0.6 percentage points year-on-year, also reaching the highest level since 2015. According to the data of the small business market promotion agency, registered on the public data portal of the Ministry of Public Administration and Security, the number of shopping malls in Seoul as of the third quarter of this year (September 30) was 36,7535. Considering the fact that there were 3,91499 in the first quarter and 37,321 in the second quarter, it was found that 24,000 were closed in Seoul alone.

Reporter Sunae Lee [email protected]